An epic new trilogy begins—a tie-in for the milestone fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series—that stretches from the earliest voyages of the Starship Enterprise to Captain Kirk’s historic five-year-mission…and from one universe to another!

Hidden aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise is a secret that has been passed from captain to captain, from Robert April to Christopher Pike to James T. Kirk. Now the return of the enigmatic woman once known as Number One has brought that secret to light, and Kirk and his crew must risk everything to finish a mission that began with April so many years ago…

Nearly two decades earlier, April and his crew first visited the planet Usilde, where they found both tragedy and a thorny moral dilemma. Today, the legacy of that fateful occasion will compel Kirk to embark on a risky voyage back to that forbidden world—which is now deep in territory claimed by the Klingon Empire!

My Review:

I spotted this trilogy available through my library’s overdrive account and decided to add it to my wish list. Last week I noticed that the first two books were available for borrow and decided the time was right to check them out.

Now I’ve read Star Trek books before but this was my first time listening to them and I have to say that the narrator did an excellent job of bringing the characters to life. He didn’t sound exactly like Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the rest of the crew but he most definitely got the inclination of their voices down. The author also did a great job of capturing the essence of the characters and franchise as well.

If you are not a huge Trekkie I’m not sure this will interest you much, but I don’t think you will be lost. It takes place on the original timeline on Kirk’s Enterprise around the time of Star Trek: Undiscovered Country as tensions with the Klingons are high. A good chunk of the book is also told in flashback to a time before even Christopher Pike captained the Enterprise.

The plot felt much like the original series dealing with the first contact with a xenophobic race on a planet on the edge of Klingon space. The action was good, the morality lessons timely, and the dialog witty. I enjoyed the book but then again I’m a lifelong Trekkie and I brought much to the story.